Blog

How we used £0 budget to make a

Multi-Award Winning Spoken Word Short Film

Question

What do you do if God has inspired you to use the skills and talents he's given you to create something amazing? A song, A book, A film, a poem. What if you want to take what you've created and get it out there for others to see, read, hear, watch. Have you ever had a fantastic idea on how to share your craft with the world but you haven’t the means to do it? You could put a little something together but the way you want to really produce/create it takes money, resources, a team, people with the right links. If you just don't have it, what do you do with that dream, that desire?

Answer

You Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

Back Story

My poem No Poetry came about by a young lady asking me if I would come and do a poem at her event, but she wanted me to learn and perform the U.S P4CM (Passion for Christ Movement) Ready or Not Spoken Word performance piece by Poets Ezekiel & Janette..ikz. In that very inspiring piece the bride represents the church and the groom represents Christ (just like No Poetry does). I agreed to come and perform but I wasn’t at all comfortable performing someone else’s poem…especially when God has blessed me with talents and gifts of my own! So now I’m feeling challenged and inspired. I commence to do what I usually do before I put pen to paper and prayed and ask the Lord for a poem. Thus No Poetry was born.

The live performance of No Poetry was received very well at this event but due to other projects i had on at the time, a long time passed before it was performed again. In 2017 it was performed at an event called Soul Food with an awesome reception and the overwhelming cry was “Everyone needs to hear this poem Jermaine!”So again I’m feeling challenged and inspired. But how are we going to makeNo Poetry reach as many people as possible…? That's it! A Spoken Word Short Film! We were coming up with some fantastic ideas, but really what can we do with £0 budget? We can't produce what we'd ideally like to so what do we do? We decided not to let anything hold us back, "Let's just do what we can" my wife says. So we pulled in some favours, filmed in a family members house, got a couple of friends on board, one with a camera and a willing but talented actress. By God’s grace we filmed No Poetry in a day and it looked alright!

As a filmmaker there are ALWAYS aspects of your work you wish you could improve but we are so pleased with the positive responses and recognition we are getting and the fact that people are being blessed through the message that No Poetry gives then how can we not be grateful! How can we not give thanks for what we were able to achieve with our £0 budget short film, who knows what God will do or is doing with it. We have to be willing, we have to make those steps and we have to trust God with the outcome. We’re praising God for all we’ve achieved so far with No Poetry!

Incredible. Such thought and authentic skill has gone into this poetry, it paints such an illuminated picture of the relationship we have with Christ. Your work keeps on getting better! Well done!

— Destiny Malcolm, Singer/songwriter

I have goose pimples all over my body and I must confess... This is uniquely inspiring. His name is God and His love for us is ever unfailing...

— Anon

If you haven’t seen it yet, watch it here, Please comment and let me know what you think, if you have seen it…hey might as well watch it again! LOL! Or maybe just help us share it.

We have many more poems and short film releases in the pipework so please follow us on social media to see the latest and keep us in your prayers so we can continue to share His message of Hope and Love.

Ever wondered what makes a movie be considered a Christian movie? I mean think about it really. Is it the title or that it's got references to Christianity or God? Movies such as ‘The Passion of Christ’, ‘The Case for Christ’, ‘God’s not Dead’, 'Hackshaw Ridge’ and many more alike are posed in Hollywood under the genre ‘Faith-based’ or ‘Christian movies’ due to the foundation in which the storyline finds itself or the reference to Christ/Christianity. Are these type of films only going to interest the Christian audience? Is that the aim? Thats a-whole-nother subject!

Movies vary in different production sizes and budgets, and not all succeed in being near enough to break Box Office records. For some, the recognition is fulfilled from word of mouth, festivals or online movie streaming sites like Pureflix and ChristianCinema.com or even YouTube. These include small-budgeted films like ‘The War Room’ and ‘Facing the Giants’, who have received great reviews and average scores on IMDb. It does however pose further questions as to whether budget size does really matter in how successful a film will be in the long-run and whether people will even watch it if it doesn’t have some big names in it and the polish of Hollywood.

Nevertheless one thing I want to focus on for now is whether references to Christ/Christianity or the Bible/Bible characters is what makes viewers consider a movie to be in fact Christian. Netflix is supposedly acquiring a new faith-based series called ‘Messiah’ to its streaming site. The 10-episode web series is said to challenge the meaning and existence of the ‘I Am’ in Hollywood as well as challenge us to examine what we believe and why as it creates a lucrative business within the entertainment industry. Furthermore, the Den of Geek* report that, "The series looks to provocatively consider the emergence (or reemergence?) of a figure claiming to be the Messiah in the modern world and promises to be a challenging new take on faith-based content”

New take? Confusion more like! With this speculation in place does this controversial web-series really come under a Christian genre simply due to the title? (As it clearly isn’t biblical!) Realistically, yes (which is the sad truth) because it is an amalgam of the familiarity of religion and popular themes within Christianity that often motion pictures portray. Take out or add some stuff based on what is seen as controversial/popular to be a success but still call it Faith-based. Though genres can be scrutinised and reassessed it communicates a “shorthand” and lazy explanation on the feel of the film or series.

In all, this seems like a pretty tough topic to crack because from what we understand as genre to classify a particular film, can tarnish the representation of Christianity all because of a reference to Christ or assuming to encompass the topic of Christianity despite it hurting the credibility of what we believe. It truly poses the question if it’s really fair for Christians to have to accept web-series like the ‘Messiah’ or films like 'Noah', which are greatly flawed in terms of biblical accuracy and convoluted concepts (such as rock Giants!?..say no more!) as a “Christian film”.

Overall, the big question here as in the title is, ‘What makes a Christian movie Christian’?

#CSEDAY18

Today, 18th March 2018 is CSE Awareness day. CSE stands for Child Sexual Exploitation. Many people don't know what the acronym stands for or even that there’s a specific day each year marked to highlight this important issue. That's why I'm writing about it! To let you know what we here at FCP are doing to help! #awarenesscauseschange

Official statistics on how many sexually exploited children have been identified by the authorities are not currently available. Although there has been a lot of research, very few studies look into the numbers affected. However, we do know that child sexual exploitation can have devastating effects on a child or young person that can last throughout their lives. Long-term effects impact young people's social integration and economic well-being and may adversely affect their life chances. (NSPCC)

We all have young people in our lives whether we're parents, grandparents, siblings, uncles, aunts, godparents or friends. Wouldn't it be comforting knowing that those young people, your special young people, have the knowledge and awareness of CSE to be able to at least know how to do something about it if they were ever in that situation? I know I'd feel comforted!...That's where FCP are trying to help!

CSE Play

'I'm Having Sex' is FCP's theatrical production highlighting CSE and child abuse. Once a popular play performed to audiences, we now use 'I'm Having Sex' as a Theatre In Education (TIE) production for Secondary Schools and Colleges, it's mainly targeted at the young people but other different groups such as parents, foster carers, healthcare professionals and the police can also benefit. The play has proved very effective in bringing about awareness of the matter and highlighting healthy and unhealthy/abusive relationships to young people, giving us the opportunity to have frank discussions and educate on many issues that are relevant to CSE and child abuse including, grooming, underage sex and gang culture, to name a few.

At Final Call Productions we aim to increase the knowledge and understanding in children and young people by helping them to make safe choices, understand healthy relationships and know how and where they can access support if there is an issue.

Child Sexual Exploitation and Child Abuse are on the rise, the enemy is having a field day with our young people, help us at FCP to help our children and younger generation by spreading the word and developing recognition of the awful occurrence of CSE.

If you know any Schools that could benefit from FCP's TIE package, please get in contact at finalcallproductions@gmail.com